Just out of curiosity, I have to ask:

Today I have seen already two new members without any posts banned. How did THAT happen?? :confused:

Yep. It happens. Usually they're bot accounts.

Oh. Thank you!

Now I have this unsatiable urge to know what a bot account is. UrGh. I can google that though! :D

"bot accounts" are usually set up by automated programs for the purposes of spamming links to porn, advertising or other such nonsense.

I see. That's just nasty.

Thank you Andrew!

But also some bots are good like google or yahoo bots which crawl web pages to index them for their search engines. That's different from what Andrew is describing and are more commonly called "crawlers" or "spiders".

But also some bots are good like google or yahoo bots which crawl web pages to index them for their search engines

To the best of my very limited knowledge the search engine crawlers index the information for the perpose of listing it in the search engine . . .Google / yahoo crawlers do NOT "join" communities they run across for the purpose of spamming = a HUGE difference

I got a PM once from a user with no posts. Was it a bot spammer? I thought it was something weird and did not reply.

Depends what it says, but I think you can still make out PMs even without posts.

To the best of my very limited knowledge the search engine crawlers index the information for the perpose of listing it in the search engine . . .Google / yahoo crawlers do NOT "join" communities they run across for the purpose of spamming = a HUGE difference
Oh yes, I am aware of that meadd.

'Bot' stands for 'Robot'.

They trawl for addresses (like "data mining"?) that they can sell to Spammers, to do spam marketing, IIRC.

People find and THEN sell email address lists to marketing companies, so they can spam people, etc. :(

Protection against Bots is why you need to enter those funny wavy alphanumeric codes on some web pages. :)

Protection against Bots is why you need to enter those funny wavy alphanumeric codes on some web pages. :)
Yes, the entering of the code proves that you are human and not a bot as a bot can't enter the code.